Grigori
}} |} Background Cassiel was an angel in the service of Dagda. He spent the Age of Dragons protecting the men who hid from the might of the warring gods around them. It was his counsel that led Dagda to create and sign the Compact, but Cassiel felt the Compact did not go far enough. He wanted the gods to retreat entirely, to let men form their own world. When the Compact allowed the gods to battle through men, Cassiel abandoned Dagda's service and began his own crusade to lead men away from a war that has little to do with them. The Grigori are the only civilization that can recruit the powerful Adventurer unit. The Adventurer is a Great Person and Hero that can be upgraded into almost any human unit. The Grigori use these customizable heroes as elite warriors, and they can grow into some of the best units in the game. Features Strategy Tips The Grigori are perhaps the most versatile civilization you will ever find, however you are forced from the beginning to make a few decisions as to which style of play you would like to adopt. First you need to understand the Grigori special units: # Dragon Slayers , these replace Champions with the exception that they also have Courage and Dragon Slaying as promotions (promotions thankfully carry on as they upgrade). Except for # Grigori Medics , little used healers mainly because they are acquired from Medicine. They do have the ability to explore rival territory though, which can come in handy. # Luonnotar, the Grigori ace in the hole. One of these in any important city and the city becomes almost unbreachable. This is one of only two non-hero units in the game that is Magic Immune. Enjoy it. However you don't get them until you get Archmages. Note also: you cannot have more than four at any time! # Immortal Adventurers. Okay, actually, Immortals aren't unique, and they require going down the religious path which is 90% worthless for the Grigori, but other than the Luonnotar (which have their own trade-offs like losing their weapon promotions), they're the best choice for your melee-line adventurers. There's nothing like a quartet of permanently-immortal heroes to irritate a conquering rival, and combined with Obsidian Gates (or better yet, The Nexus), you can warp them from your capital upon rebirth to any city you want instantly, providing the perfect defense for any besieged city. Once you've got Mithril Working, try trading with other civs for the needed religious techs (should be an easy con with human players, after all, you're Grigori; what are you going to be able do with Theology?), then research Divine Essence and show no fear with your Immortal heroes! Buildings: # Grigori Tavern, +1 adventure point, +1 trade route, +25% trade yield # Adventurer's Guild, +2 adventure points, +25% great people points, +2 Experience Points for newly built ground units. # Monument, not exactly Grigori specific but worth mentioning. +15% great people, +3 culture Tactics First decide whether you're more interested in being a merchant prince or a scholar. Scholarly Grigori Here you are looking at the arcane path pure and simple. No one is better at Sorcery than the Grigori and the reason is the Adventurers. Race as fast as you can for your Adepts and upgrade your Adventurers to Adepts. Typically you can have Branding (the first Adventurer) as an Adept with Combat V (he can kill any barbarians you should meet at this point). Then move on to Mages and Archmages. There are several fine points you need to understand when doing this. # The Arcane trait will allow your Adventurers to upgrade a lot faster. # Combat V then Twincast for promotions allows for a significant number of Fireballs or # Get Fire Mana as soon as possible for the above Fireballs and Fire Elementals. # Enchantment III gives Spellstaff promotion. (12 every 2 turns) You also just happen to start with Enchantment Mana. However, remember that your Adventurer Mages will stop gaining XP at 100, so you have a limited number of free promotions before you have to send them to battle. The Twincast ability will guzzle up 6 promotions for Combat V and Twincast, and 3 for a Tier 3 summoning spell. 100 XP gives you 9 promotions plus 2 free promotions from the upgrade to Mage/Archmage, leaving you with 2 additional promotions. So either you focus on casting fireballs instead of Tier 3 summons, or you pick the Charismatic trait which gives you 11 promotions for 100 XP. # Death III gives Lichdom ( use this on 4 Archmages for a total of 8 Adventurers as powerful Sorcerers instead of just 4 as Archmages). It also lets you summon Wraiths which, in combination with above mentioned Twincast promotion gives you up to 8 Tier 3 Summons a turn. # Law III used to grant the Unyielding Order spell, which zeros-out unhappiness in the caster's city and ends revolts instantly. As of 0.41j, Unyielding Order can only be cast by Order High Priests which you cannot get as Grigori. # Life III gives the ability to Resurrect your fallen Heroes. (Underhill: Actually, this doesn't work for the Grigori; you can only resurrect unique heroes. Zimbel: Seems correct to me; Adventurers aren't Heroes; they are Units with the Hero Promotion. Of course, without a religion, there will be few of these.) # Being able to Teleport between your cities can be powerful, so be sure to research Pass through the Ether and build Obsidian Gates (or the Nexus Wonder). Altar of the Luonnatar It is important to note that the Luonnotar unit used to be able to found/upgrade the Altar of the Luonnotar, however for game balance reasons this has been removed. Instead, you'll want to do the following: * Generate as many Great Prophets as you can through normal means (difficult to do without religion, but there are some ways). * Research to Theocracy and have as many Prophet specialists as you can in your cities. * Pop your worldspell Ardor and you'll very quickly get the remaining Great Prophets. * Research the rest of the way to get to Omniscience, which will finally allow you to build the final stage of the Altar of the Luonnatar. Ten Tips for playing the Grigori taken from the civ-fanatics thread Top Ten Tips for Your Favorite Civs 1. Adventurers. Adventurers are THE reason to play as the Grigori. An adventurer is a hero who can upgrade along ANY upgrade path. That means that you can have heroic archmages, heroic phalanxes, heroic knights, etc. Most of your game will be built around whichever strategy you decide to pursue with the adventurers. 2. Agnostic. As an agnostic, you cannot convert to any religion, you cannot spread any religion, you can have nothing at all to do with any religion. Basically, you can scratch that entire research line off your list and ignore it unless you decide to pursue an Altar of the Luonnotar victory. 3. Adaptive. Cassiel is an adaptive leader. That means that every 100 turns or so (on normal speed), he can change his traits. He is always philosophical, but he is only industrious for the first 95 turns. After that, he can change to whatever he wants. Change according to what you're planning on doing. Financial is great if you need to research those vital techs. Aggressive is good if you're going to go to war. Charismatic is great to get your adventurers a few extra upgrades without risking them in combat. Pick whatever you need most. 4. Adventurer spawning. In orbis and FF+, adventurers are spawned automatically; there are a few things you can do to increase the chance, but nothing worth basing an entire strategy around. In all the other mods however, adventurers are spawned via great people points. This means that running a specialist economy severely hampers your ability to get your heros. And considering the power of the heroes, it's generally better to spawn them than other great people. However, there is a second problem with this. The greatest amount of adventurer points you can get is 5. Your palace provides 1. An adventurers guild provides 2 (and +2 xp for units built in the city), a grigori tavern provides another 1, and there is one more building that I can't remember. So, in order to get adventurers at a reasonable rate, you need to boost your great person spawn rate. Building the buildings that increase the adventurer points is one way of doing this. Building the national epic (preferably in your capital), provides a 100% boost to their spawning, in addition to the 100% from a philosophical leader. You can run pacifism to get another 50% boost. And there are a few more buildings here and there that boost the spawn chance. I have maxed out at about 20 adventurer points in my capital before. 5. Your world spell. There is a bright side to all of this however. The grigori world spell resets all your great person counters, making it possible to rapidly get more adventurers if you need them. It does have other uses however. If you go for an Altar of the Luonnotar victory, you can grab theocracy, run it for a little while, then cast your world spell. You will rapidly assemble lots of great prophets, allowing you to nearly instantly build the first six stages of the altar. You can of course apply this strategy wherever it seems appropriate. 6. Adventurer points. The downside of going for adventurers is that all the buildings that unlock adventurer points are down the government lines. That means that you have to run a balancing act. Do you go down the government lines to unlock the buildings that allow more adventurers, or do you go down the other lines to provide more units that your adventurers can upgrade into. 7. Choosing the lines of specialization. You are going to have to figure out at what point you are going to try to conquer the world, or achieve whatever other victory you are aiming for. Then you are going to have to decide what you aim your adventurers down. It makes little sense to send your adventurers down the magical line if you are going to win the game before you ever get archmages. On the same note, it wouldn't be a good idea to send a bunch of adventurers down the recon line if the game is going to end very late, as you can only have 4 beastmasters (and rangers can't upgrade to anything else). 8. The early game. The grigori will generally get their first adventurer around turn 50 or so. Their next adventurer will probably come around turn 100 to 150 or so. If you are playing in an isolated start, you can just leave your adventurers alone, and later upgrade them into whatever you want. If you are playing in a crowded start however, you often can't do this as someone is going to come knocking on your door, and you'll need a hero to hold them back. The grigori don't get any special mechanics other than the adventurer system, so all the other civs will be better than them in one way or another. Use your adventurers if you need to or you want to go up the metal or recon/horse lines. Otherwise, avoid using them unless you have to. 9. Magic. There are two ways to do magic. Use your adventurers, or use it as support. If you are using it as support, you are going to want to consider which tier 1 or tier 2 spells are most useful to you. Maelstrom, fireball, enchanted blade, etc. If you're using your adventurers for magic, you are going to want at least 1 death node so that you can have 4 heroic archmages and 4 heroic adventurers. And remember, a heroic adept class unit, with combat 5, gets twincast. That means that you can have 8 summoners, all summoning 2 summons. And because they are so powerful, it makes lots of sense to go deep. Sun mana is especially powerful, as is metamagic if you have lots of mana nodes. 10. Have fun. Most important rule of all. The grigori aren't restricted from anything except religion, so go ahead and play around with them. Feel free to experiment. Cassiel the Merchant Prince This is where Grigori really and truly shine and many people often run screaming in fear. Remember to take Financial as your Adaptive trait. Step 1 - your first goal is going to be to get your Market for some coin generation. This also allows you to make a Great Merchant (for those who love math you are at 8GPP already, the Great Merchant comes fast and will give you a total bonus +9 gold and +1 food). This will cost you an Adventurer though but no worries. Step 2 - Get Currency. This allows you to make Mercenaries which aside from your Adventurers, who happen to be bored drinking at the moment, will be your staple unit. Mercenaries have two bonuses that can not be discounted. First you can buy another one in any city with a Mercenary through Recruit Mercenary. Second they upgrade as you acquire metals. (Windscion: but as of 0.21, so do your other melee units, and some cavalry units.) The other bonus you get from Currency is the Adventurer's Guild (more great people and experience points for your Mercenaries (which are strength 4 units to start with). Step 3 - this is often debated but I like to deviate and grab Bronze Working. It brings my Mercenaries to strength 5 units (with Copper and supplements my production). Step 4 - From here move on to get your Shadows, and upgrade your Adventurers to Shadows. They should upgrade straight to being little mini gods and everyone will fear them. Step 5 - Get Warfare, for the city combat and defense as well as the great people bonus. Step 6 - Move on the metal line for more upgrades to the Mercenaries. Mithril makes them strength 8 units. Advantages to this tactic are plenty, # All of your units are either Invisible or Hidden Nationality. # As your empire expands your coin expands fast. You can get 3-4 trade routes per city (which you need more cities then trade routes by the way) and they produce more. # Great people: you're often looking at +240% GPP rate with +5 adventure points worked in. Civics: * Consumption, this is the first civic choice with impact. It will give you more gold (+10%) and should give you +1 happy off the bat for the Market. If you have the Tavern you get another happy and down the line if you're bored you can get another from the Theatre. * Caste System is next in line. This allows you to spend all this gold and gives your great people bonuses to research and culture. * Guilds is a good choice when available for the unlimited merchants (just keep them out of your capital if you want to keep getting Adventurers). Note that this would replace Caste System. * Mercantilism can give you another happy from Market. Down the line if you decide you need to push it a bit more you have access to other civics for a bit more happy: * Republic - more happy in your largest cities, also increases your Great Person birth rate, generating adventurer's faster. * Scholarship - happy from library and bonus to great people working. As far as buildings are concerned you are looking at only having 2 that impact you (other then mentioned above) and those are the Carnival (+1 happy) and the Gambling House. The Grigori rely on the gambling house, this allows you to slide the money bar to get happy. When this combines with all the bonuses and everything else can produce enough coin to compensate for any lack of hammers you might have. First you need to understand that trade routes increase over time and easily you can get to 4 trade routes per city (6 with great lighthouse). You also can pull an additional 50% bonus per trade route. Then you look at a base 6g per city with +6g per Great Merchant and a modifier of +80% (+180% in a city with the Bazaar of Mammon). Stacking a lot of this together in your capital you can easily run ... * from buildings 6g * from trade routes 12g (will increase) * from merchants 18g (3 is very easy to get) * total 36g * modified at max 101g This is achieved without lowering the slider at all. Lowering the slider on a well developed city by say 30% can achieve a base gold easily of about 15g which is counted before the percentage increase. Now take into account the cost of Mercenaries and you can see why a lot of time its easier to buy them. Keep in mind the more gold you are producing, although it lowers your science output, it greatly increases your happiness. Strategy links civfanatics thread (v0.31) Information Leaders: :*Cassiel World Spell :*Ardor Corrections Elementals Summons Category:Top 10 Tips Category:Civilizations